Horsing Around – Vet Students

(Chris) Kansas Veterinary Health Center. Today, Dodge City with the fourth year students from Kansas State University, College of Veterinary Medicine on their Dodge City elective. So, welcome to Dodge City, right? (Students) Yeah. Right. (Chris) And I guess we’ll first start off by just saying, cause there’s a lot of people that like to know, your name, where you’re from and what your interests are after you get done with vet school your fourth year. (Andrea) So, I’m Andrea Olson, I’m from Lisbon, North Dakota, and I’m interested in mixed practice but my main interest is cow/calf. (Chris) Do you want to go back to North Dakota eventually? (Andrea) Where ever the wind blows. (Chris) Where ever the wind blows, alright. (Natalie) And I am Natalie Rykhus from Mankato, Minnesota. I’m probably going to go the mixed animal route as well. (Chris) Good. (Shannon) I am Shannon Goedeken, I’m from Platte Center, Nebraska and I am also interested in mixed animal practice. (Chris) OK. (Megan) I’m Megan Cunningham, I’m from Ashland, Kansas, and I’m interested in mixed practice, hopefully somewhere in the southwest Kansas area. (Chris) And you know that’s something too, as you guys are on this elective, we’ve seen different things here with horses you know I think a lot of it is, Dr. Fingland has got it so we can come here with the Dodge City Rodeo and get to incorporate students with the aspects of rodeo,see the emergencies. We are part of the emergency crew for the animals during the rodeo so we’ve had that aspect of it. But then in between the rodeos we’ve been doing things too, so Megan do you want to just go through a case that maybe you have seen. (Megan) Yeah, this morning we had a case, the trick riders horses needed their teeth floated and had the sharp points filed off, so we did that this morning. Got ’em so they don’t hurt themselves while they eat. (Chris) Yeah, those are just routine things that we’ve been doing here for… just routine equine health, right? So, we’ll do those in between, not necessarily emergencies but some of those things too. So, Shannon what’s another case that maybe we’ve seen here at the rodeo? (Shannon) Well, these rodeo horses travel a lot so we’ve done some health certificates for some horses that were going out of state after the rodeo. And we just do a basic exam on those and make sure they are healthy and ready to go. (Chris) And yeah, it’s quite amazing once you guys probably see the amount of horses that go in and out of here. And it’s a six day event so there’s a lot of different horses that are coming in an out of here. Health certificates are very important and these rodeo horses are going all over the United States so pretty cool and very important to have those, so that’s good. Natalie, what’s another case that maybe you’ve seen? (Natalie) One that sticks in my mind happened this morning. It was just a horse that wouldn’t eat this morning and he’s looking back at his flank acting a little colicky. So, we just looked at it and determined that it wasn’t too bad at the time, so we just gave it some pain meds and saw how it went throughout the rest of the afternoon and responded, so that was good. Interesting case. (Chris) Yeah, good. And then I guess Andrea what’s another case maybe that you’ve seen here that might be a little bit different? (Andrea) Well, with the rain they’ve been having here and the ground the way it is, we’ve been seeing a lot of lameness so we’ve been doing lameness evaluations, flexion tests, hoof test series. Things of that nature. (Chris) So, as you can see we kind of do a little bit of everything here at Dodge CIty and it kind of keeps the students out of trouble. So we really… we get here at 8 o’clock in the morning. We’ll be here during most of the day, so they have to slack in the morning deal, which is just part of the rodeo. And then the performance will be this evening at 7:45, so the aspects in between that and what we’ve been doing, we’ve been doing some tours. We toured a packing house, went to an auction. So all those things incorporated into a jam packed week of this elective and it’s sure nice to have them here. And it’s sure nice to have the partnership with Dodge City Rodeo and Kansas State University. Thank you guys for coming. I’m Dr. Chris Blevins at Kansas State University Veterinary Health Center and we’ll see you around.